Was there much improvement in JCPS test scores for bused students?
One of the more interesting data graphics in the recent Courier-Journal article series on the history of busing in Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) (Paywall free access here - Thank you Courier-Journal!) asks, “Does busing help boost test scores?” The graphic with this question appears under the section heading “Does Busing Improve Academics?”
Concludes the Courier:
“Busing shows evidence of boosting academic achievement.”
This comment needs to be put into perspective.
According to the Courier’s graphic, which appears to rely on data obtained from an open records request, here is how the KPREP reading and math proficiency rates looked in 2018-19 for elementary school students who reside in the West End. Kids from the West End are predominantly poor and minority, with many Black students among them.
First of all, if after more than 40 years of busing, West End students bused to supposedly better school situations in East and South JCPS are only scoring 23.3% proficient in reading and just 19.9% proficient in math, that doesn’t look like anything to crow about.
Also, overall, the scores for all West End students averaged together is even less impressive.
Certainly, assuming the data provided the Courier is accurate (I know of no way to verify this as it would require access to individual student records, which would violate privacy laws), the busing benefits reported are small. Just a 5.1% proficiency rate advantage in reading and a 7.9% advantage in math. That doesn’t begin to deal with the huge white minus Black proficiency rate achievement gaps found in JCPS. Even calling these “modest” gains, as the Courier does later in the article, seems a bit of a stretch.
It’s also interesting to consider another comment made in the Courier:
“Despite the national attention on Louisville's assignment plan, neither researchers nor the district itself have ever conducted a large-scale study of the plan's effect on academic achievement.”
This assertion is somewhat debatable. Brent McKim, the head of the Jefferson County Teachers Association, sent me some data from 2014 that is similar to what the Courier collected, but that earlier data, like the Courier’s recent work, isn’t exactly a major, large-scale study, either.
As a note, McKim’s data showed about the same, small busing benefits that the Courier reports for the 2018-19 data.
But, it’s fair to say there hasn’t been much research in this very important area, and that is just inexcusable.
There’s another item the Courier didn’t seem to cover. You can bus students across town to make the racial mix look more uniform at the school level, but that doesn’t ensure real integration is occurring. Were Black students bused to the East End just shuttled into separate classrooms from most of their white counterparts? We speculated about this five years ago in our report “Blacks Continue Falling Through Gaps in Louisville’s Schools, The 2016 Update.”
Unfortunately, the Courier doesn’t address this issue. It would take an open record request to find out the truth even if the data exists.
By the way, the graph only has information for elementary school students because this is the only school level where a portion of the West End students who might be bused out got to remain in a close-to-home resides school, instead. That split student group of elementary level students creates the ability to compare test results for students who got bused to those who didn’t. In sharp contrast, there just isn’t a comparison group of West End students going to West End middle and high schools.
Even if the Courier’s slight benefit data are accurate, it is clear the small improvements don’t begin to close the white minus black achievement gaps in math and reading, which another Courier graphic shows are generally about 30 points wide for both subjects. And, this is all that has been achieved after more than 40 years of busing in Louisville.
It’s clearly time to provide a better deal for minority students, especially Black students, in JCPS. This is why the Kentucky Legislature should put stress on improving school choice options for parents of these students to try alternative school situations that might do much more for these children of color than JCPS has done in nearly half a century of sometimes forced busing.